RANT on Community Service

    I would like to start this post with the fact that I have nothing against community service.  In fact I believe it is one of the greatest inventions in the world, topping sliced-bread perhaps!  First off, I would like to be clear that when I say community service, I mean that it was the voluntary participation in a project for the betterment of others/society with no directly personal gain.  Sounds simple and morally honest right?  It should be but as college applications get more and more competitive, the big picture really starts to come out of focus.  Obviously a college will accept one resume over the other if they are identical except for one of them having 10000 more service hours.  Now that student got into college which seems like a pretty huge thing, and it is.  How did that student achieve this though?  Community service.  He proffited from something that should have been done just to be a good person.  That is not community service anymore if anything just a glorified job.  And to be honest, many of those top of the kids in the class who have months of service probobly didn't sign up to really help that man down on his luck.  They signed up for the mere fact that they knew it would get them into college.  They performed "Community Service" because they knew they would get rewarded.  This defeats the entire purpose of community service and I don't believe that the giving of ones time for such a wonderful thing should be used a monetary device.  There is a psychological theory that states that if you add extrinsic motivation to a behavior that you already are intrinsically motivated to perform, removal of the extrensic device will cause you to lose the intrinsic motivation you began with.  So when this "Community Service Legend" gets out of college, they might never help out at another soup kitchen or shelter again!  That completely countered the intended effect colleges had when they began recognizing community service on resumes!  I think the answer is pretty clear about what needs to be done about this situation.